Most of triathlon’s big names have given their reaction to the shock news that Collin Chartier is banned from triathlon for three years due to a positive test for EPO. And now we can add two-time Kona king Chris McCormack to the list.
The Australian star provided a brutal verdict on last week’s bombshell news when he spoke to Super League Triathlon’s Short Chute Show this week. And he was scathing in his criticism of the 29-year-old Chartier.
Macca on Chartier drugs shame
“You can say sorry as much as you like, but it was quite heavy. You made a decision and you took, now question marks around everything you’ve ever done. But that decision to cheat is just, within sport, within anything, it’s just not right.
“I think it’s created a lot of uproar, and that was it. I mean come on Collin.”
Chartier of course had enjoyed something of a meteoric rise during the second half of 2022, highlighted by his victory in the lucrative PTO US Open in Dallas in September. At that stage McCormack believed Chartier might be a star of the future, but now of course he holds a very, very different perspective on what transpired.
‘From a donkey to a racehorse’
He explained: “I was looking at this athlete and we saw his performance there at the PTO, his run there was amazing at the PTO US Open. He won IRONMAN Mont Tremblant against Josh Amberger.
“He was definitely an athlete on the rise, and he came from nowhere. Not from nowhere, but I was like wow, this is an athlete that’s potentially a big player in the future.
“He was training with Lionel Sanders and doing a lot of great stuff, and then bang, p*** is positive and it’s game over.
“I guess the question mark is, sometimes when a donkey becomes a racehorse, maybe you need to question it.”
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